For Bukharian Jews, Even Fish Heads Can Be Sweet

In Jewish households, the hope for a sweet new year is expressed by the enjoyment of apples and honey, sweet foods that are available everywhere that Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated.

Bukharian Jews eat apples and honey, to be sure, but also figs, dates, pomegranates, quince, black-eyed peas, pumpkin, fish heads and, in some cases, cow lungs -- foods that reflect the bounty of their Central Asian homeland and the traditions that have been passed down throughout their millennia-old history.

"Bukharian" is the term given to Jews from the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and parts of Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, most of them have emigrated either to Israel, home to about 100,000, or to the United States, with the greatest concentration -- about 50,000 -- living in several communities of Queens, according to the Web site BukharianJews.com.

"The flood started in the late '80s," said Rabbi Itzhak Yehoshua, chief rabbi of Bukharian Jews in the United States. "With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we saw a rise in Muslim fundamentalism in these countries. And things got much worse for the Jews. Here in America, we have 100 percent more freedom than in the post-Soviet regimes."

The Bukharian Jews trace their origins 2,500 years, when the First Temple in Jerusalem was sacked and Jews emigrated to Babylon, present-day Iraq. When Babylon was conquered by the Persians shortly thereafter, the Jews who would become known as Bukharian dispersed throughout the Persian empire, farther into Central Asia.

As commerce between the East and West developed, Jews' extended family ties allowed them to become prominent players along the Silk Route that linked Europe with India and China.

"A Jewish merchant would travel to a strange town and if anyone questioned him, he would say, `I'm staying with my cousin,'" Yehoshua explained. "And who was to say it wasn't his cousin?"

Throughout most of the Bukharian Jews' history, Samarkand, in present-day Uzbekistan, was home to the largest Jewish community on the Silk Route, according to Rabbi Gil Marks, a culinary historian and author of The World of Jewish Cooking (Fireside, $17).

But when Samarkand was destroyed in the late 16th century by the Uzbeks, a group of Turkic tribes, Bukhara emerged as the center of Jewish culture, although there were sizable Jewish populations in Tashkent and smaller cities in the region as well.

"This part of Central Asia," Marks said, "was known for its very ancient irrigation canals, and through irrigation, they had an incredible array of fruits and vegetables." Fruits play an important role in all the culinary styles of the region, but Marks said that the use of quince, the somewhat misshapen relative of pears and apples, was a unique hallmark of Jewish cooking.

With members of the community regularly traveling throughout Asia, Bukharian Jewish cooking gradually came to reflect the cuisines of other countries along the Silk Route. Dumplings and green tea came from China; tandoori bread and the filled turnovers called samosas, from India.

But the greatest culinary influence on the Bukharian kitchen was probably Persia, modern-day Iran. Pilaf, a delicate amalgam of rice, meats, fruits and vegetables, is the creation of the Persian kitchen. It has been reinterpreted by Bukharian Jews in scores of plofs, as they are known in Bukharian, itself a close relative of the Persian language Farsi.

Bukharian Jews make a big deal of the Talmud's aural association of foods and concepts, and the Rosh Hashana celebration is a veritable feast of wordplay. Culinary historian Marks noted some other foods dictated by the Talmud to be eaten on Rosh Hashana on the basis of their Aramaic names.

Kara is the Aramaic name for pumpkin, Marks said, "and that sounds like `yikra,' `to be called out,' as our good deeds are called out at this time of judgment."

In the old country, Bukharian Jews dipped in honey not only apples, but also pieces of boiled beef lung. Rabbi Yehoshua said that the name for lung, re-ah, sounds like the Hebrew term for "behold," as in "behold a New Year," part of the Rosh Hashana liturgy.

In New York, however, kosher butchers selling lungs are hard to come by. He said his congregants make do with the head of a fish. Since "rosh" means "head" (Rosh Hashana means, literally, "head of the year"), heads -- of fish, of cows, of sheep -- figure in many Jewish traditions.

In Yehoshua's family, a pomegranate is served on the second night of Rosh Hashana to distinguish the kiddush from that of the first night. The pomegranate's abundant seeds are rife with meaning. Some say that there are 613 of them, one for each of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) contained in the Torah.

Some say that the seeds signify multiplicity. Multiplicity of what?

"We should multiply, blessings should multiply," said the rabbi, taking an all-embracing view of tradition. "Everything good should multiply."